Oregon State basketball

The first in a series of projections for the Pac-12 race in 2016-17. I’ll have a revised version late next month, after the early-entry process settles, and then a final version prior to next season.

On first glance, the league’s shape should change: More vertical, less horizontal. More elite teams, not as much quality depth.

Put another way: The Pac-12 could have more high seeds in the NCAA Tournament — more top-four seeds — but fewer overall bids. (The seven it received to the ’16 tournament were a record. We won’t discuss what happened when those seven teams took the floor.)

UCLA and Colorado should be better next season; Cal, Utah and Washington should be worse.

Arizona could become elite again; Oregon could return to reality.

(The Ducks are fresh off the first No. 1 seed in school history; anything less is reality.)

I tweeted on Friday, after losses by Cal and Oregon State, that the NCAA tournament had been an unmitigated disaster for the Pac-12 (to the extent that basketball tournaments can be deemed unmitigated disasters).

Turned out, that tweet was unmitigatedly premature.

After Utah’s no-show Saturday against Gonzaga, the Pac-12’s performance in March Madness became an unmitigated disaster. Or whatever’s worse than that.

Seven teams in the field.

Five teams out in the first round.

One team out in the second round.

One team left standing for the Sweet 16.

You could make a strong case that no league has performed this poorly in the NCAAs. Ever.

Instead of analyzing every matchup in every game and spending 30 or 45 minutes filling out the brackets, I whipped through it in two minutes.

Ended up where I began — where I began the season:

North carolina was my preseason No. 1, and I’m sticking with the Teels. After all the ups and downs of the season, they’re peaking, especially on defense, at the right time.

They’ve got size, they’ve got depth, they’ve got scorers … offense wins the NCAA title, not defense: you have to be able to score at the end of the shot clock in the final minutes of close games … and they have good guards.

1:30 p.m. update: Cox is offering Pac-12 tourney games in Arizona and Southern California on a free-preview basis this week, per reports out of Arizona. That’s good news for fans, but it doesn’t solve the larger issue of the Category-5 storm that will hit the conference if the situation is unresolved come football season.

9:15 a.m. update: I should add one thing: The regional programming on the Pac-12 Networks will include football starting in the fall. You will need access to the National feed to watch teams outside your home region when their games are on the Pac12Nets. For transplants in Southern California in particular, that could be a gigantic fail for the conference if situation with Cox isn’t resolved …

The Hotline occasionally takes a break from the usual array of commentary, analysis and news coverage and heads down a different path: Public Service Announcements.

With the Pac-12 tournament beginning today, this seemed like a good time for a quick PSA post — an attempt to explain who can, and can’t, watch which games of the three-day event.

It shouldn’t be so complicated, but because of the Pac-12 Networks, it is.

Despite the existence of a wholly-owned TV network that has seven feeds, not all fans will be able to watch every game.

In fact, some fans won’t have access to most games.

At the heart of the matter is the Pac12Nets’ move to regionalized programming, which was outlined previously on the Hotline.

Essentially, it means that any given game on the Pac12Nets this week will be shown only on the National feed and the regional feeds relevant to the teams involved.

Which means:

If you don’t have access to the National feed, either on basic cable or a sports tier, then you will only see the games involving your regional teams.

Housekeeping items before we get to the Hotline’s Pac-12 postseason awards and all-conference teams …

*** The official awards/all-league selections, as picked by the coaches, will be announced Monday at 6 p.m. on the Pac-12 Network (the national feed).

*** I’m proud to say that I picked Oregon to win the conference regular-season title all the way back in June. I am not proud to say I didn’t pick Oregon on my preseason media ballot — and will immediately launch an investigation into the reason I (inexplicably) changed my mind.

*** ICYMI: This was my view of the UCLA situation last week. After the Bruins’ wretched performance vs. the Oregon schools — and 6-12 conference finish, which ties the last Lavin season as UCLA’s worst of the past 60-something years — it seems appropriate to double down on everything I wrote.

If you’ve been immersed in the World Cup (guilty!) … or focused on the Ed O’Bannon trial and NCAA governance issues (also guilty!) … or counting the days until training camp (semi-guilty)… or totally tuned out for the summer (must be nice) … well, the NBA Draft is upon us.

The conference is projected to produce four first rounders Thursday evening, with Arizona’s Aaron Gordon a likely top-10 pick and UCLA’s trio of Zach LaVine, Jordan Adams and Kyle Anderson slotted in the 15-25 range, give or take.

(Count me as a big Anderson fan; he was my pick for league POY and should be selected ahead of his Bruin teammates.)

Washington’s C.J. Wilcox and Colorado’s Spencer Dinwiddie are pegged for late first/early second, but, as we seen every year in the NBA and NFL, it only takes one team.

(The same applies to Arizona’s Nick Johnson and Stanford’s Dwight Powell, who are candidates for the second half of the second round.)

How would a quartet of first-round picks compare to the Pac-12’s production in previous years?

Below is a year-by-year breakdown over the past decade. As you can see – and as many fans are no doubt aware – the league was loaded with high-end talent late last decade.

There have been 12 Pac-12 basketball tournaments in the event’s second life, but none quite like this.

There have been heavy favorites, and there have been muddled masses of teams with designs on the crown. Never have we encountered this combination of heavy favorite and second-tier logjam.

Arizona should win, and might even win all three games handily.

But if the Wildcats don’t win, it’s chaos. You’d have as much chance of picking a winner at the MGM Grand Garden Arena as beating the house at the MGM Grand Casino.

This is a conference that played 18 games only to produce a five-team tie for third place.

It’s a conference that saw the second-place team lose to the 11th-place team last weekend by 18 points.

My view of potential chaos is shaped by skepticism of UCLA. I don’t see the second-seeded Bruins as any more likely to win the tournament than the mass that tied for third place (and let’s throw Utah into the mix of contenders).

How much faith can you have in a team that lost to Washington State by 18 …. and didn’t record a single road sweep in league play … and lost to Washington State by 18.

(Doesn’t matter if the Bruins had locked up the No. 2 seed. Elite teams don’t play the way UCLA played in Pullman under any circumstances.)

The league is expected to announce to official award winners and all-league teams later this morning (approx 10:30).

Here are my picks, which are based solely on how the teams, coaches and players performed in conference play.

There’s such a wide range of non-conference schedules — for example: ASU’s noncon SOS is 234, while Colorado’s is 39 — that using the full season skews the results for league-specific honors.

Narrowing the standard to league games gets us much closer to that goal (although not all the way there because of the unbalanced schedule):

Coach of the Year: Colorado’s Tad Boyle. Not an easy category because the post-season standings so closely mirrored the preseason expectations: No team was markedly better than expected. The nod goes to Boyle for guiding CU to the third-place tie despite losing one of the league’s top-three best players, G Spencer Dinwiddie, to a season-ending knee injury in mid-January. For my money, Boyle is the league’s best coach, and he proved it (again) this season.Also considered: Utah’s Larry Krystkowiak and Arizona State’s Herb Sendek.

COY note: The nature of the award as I see it — which coach makes the most of what he has — discounts the role recruiting plays in a particular season and, consequently, the candidacy of Arizona’s Sean Miller, who assembled the best team.